May 19, 2018

There has been another horrible school shooting, this time in Texas. As usual, the ghouls of the gun control movement aren't even waiting until the facts are known to push their agenda.

The core problem of American politics these days is that the Democrats have mostly given up on trying to find workable solutions. Gun control has become its own end, without regard to whether it is effective or even feasible. it's an article of faith, not a public policy proposal.

Perhaps this is because the case for gun control has never been weaker. Remember, banning or restricting guns is supposed to result in lower societal violence. That's the entire point of embracing it.

A situation where violent crime falls even as gun ownership surges and gun laws are loosened should logically destroy the thesis that more guns equal more crime.

There is also the problem of the European experience. Europe's gun laws have always been held up as the model to which Americans should aspire. Only by embracing European levels of firearms restrictions could the US achieve the lower European levels of violent crime.

At least that was the thesis until a few years ago.

We are now seeing the opposite happening. Europe's violent crime - including gun crime - is surging. It's so bad, many countries are trying to cover it up in order to downplay public outrage.

Let's look at this from the highest level of abstraction. You have a policy - we'll call it Policy A. Policy A is supposed to reduce overall societal violence in general and make large-scale violent events (that kill many people at once) more rare.

Policy A is not in use in one country, but is in use in others. In the one country, overall violent crime is falling and while there are still large-scale events, their frequency is still rare.

But in other countries that have embraced Policy A, not only is violent crime in general surging, large-scale events are also becoming more frequent.

By any objective measure, one must conclude Policy A is a failure.

And yet the left (and their Quisling Never Trump allies) are still pushing it.

This is because like so many liberal/progressive policies, results no longer matter. Sentiment, emotion and virtue-signalling are what count. If you point out the flaws in gun control, you're not just wrong, you're evil, with blood on your hands. Only this can explain the visceral hatred of the National Rifle Association - an organization that kills no one. (As opposed to Planned Parenthood, which derives most of its income from killing unborn babies.)

Getting back to the problem of school shootings, by now it should be obvious that gun control won't work. The problem is entirely with our mental health system and the police and school officials who should be watching out for troubled kids. The fact of the matter is that even if total gun prohibition was embraced tomorrow, these horrified events would still happen because the perpetrators would simply use other means.

The perpetrators do not undertake these tasks lightly. Study after study shows their meticulous preparation - including their media strategy. If one means is taken away, another will be used.

In a sense, they are like the 80s TV character MacGyver, who specialized in improvised escapes. Each week viewers watched him fabricate what he needed out of random items.

The perpetrators are very much like the TV icon insofar as they obsessively study the task at hand and use the resources available to them. If guns disappear, they will ram cars into parades, or drive trucks into the stands, or use explosives to complete their grisly tasks.

The gun control crowd doesn't care if their policy works and they're resolutely trying to stop every other approach. That's why this situation persists.

That and the fact that law enforcement and government officials who fail in their jobs are never held to account. We'll know the left is serious about stopping crime when they join the call for the Broward Coward Sheriff's ouster.

May 13, 2018

The prolonged winter has led to an amazing burst of growth. Trees and flowers are practically exploding into bloom an in effort to catch up on lost time. A couple of weeks ago my neighborhood was brown and bare, but now it is awash in every imaginable shade of green punctuated with brilliant hues of purple, white, yellow and red (to name jut a few).

It's no accident that Mothers Day falls on a Sunday in May. From time immemorial women have symbolized fertility, growth and hope for the future, just as spring frees us from the seeming death of winter.

Yet to the cultural left, motherhood is no longer a blessing. "Choice" is more important - and by this they of course mean violent death to the unborn or being-born.

Many commentators (including us on this blog) have offered alternative definitions of "feminism," but perhaps its most striking feature is its rejection of femininity itself. Women are uniquely capable of motherhood, a sacred and crucial rule, honored in every culture in every epoch. Yet feminists have nothing but contempt for women who choose to make this role the centerpiece of their lives. Some go so far as to denounce fecund women as "breeders" and blame them for every evil in the world.

The chimera of overpopulation vanished long ago, yet feminists still raise it as a way to explain, justify and even exalt in their barrenness.

For what history will surely look on as a fleeting instant, a strange group calling themselves "pro-sex feminists" at least celebrated female sexuality, but even that is being buried in the "yes means yes" and "#metoo" movement, which hold as their core teaching that women no longer have the force of will or mental ability to truly consent to sexual activity.

Simply telling a man who makes an ungallant offer to get lost is too much to expect. Why he might get angry, or break up with her, or refuse a second date! And so they acquiesce, but reserve the right to ruin him later on by smearing him as a rapist without a shred of proof.

Even Her Hillaryness Herself is insisting that she lost the vote of married women because of pressure exercised on them by their fathers, husbands and sons. Is she saying women shouldn't be allowed to vote, or marry? But even then, they still have fathers.

It is a puzzlement.

There is a tendency among aging Boomers to try to defend "original" feminism and claim it ran off the rails, but this nonsense has been baked into it from the beginning. Feminism owes its origins and world view to the experience of idle, rich, white women.

It is deeply ironic - and indicative - that the glamorous life of Hollywood feminists, with its endless stream of ex-husbands, lovers and random children with different fathers, has now been exposed as a colossal lie.

Even Hollywood royalty like Angelina Jolie now claim to have been pressured into sex. We've already discussed how "male feminist" is really just a synonym for a sexual predator who targets only the most vulnerable women.

Left out of this lamentable tale is one group, still the most despised in all of feminism: happily married mothers. They committed to marriage for life, raised their children and stand by their man. The culture hates them for it, but jealously always hates what it can't have.

In an age of destruction where the sacred is constantly being profaned, honoring tradition becomes a revolutionary act. It warms my ice-cold heart to know today millions of mothers will be thanked and honored by their children.

May 12, 2018

I freely admit that I took more than a little guilty pleasure at the suffering of the Quisling Never Trumpers at Red State. I don't generally wish anyone to suffer the pain of job loss, but at the same time it's hard to have sympathy for people who show you such utter contempt.

To put it another way: if you constantly insult your audience, don't be shocked when the bottom falls out of your writing gig.

But I digress. Today's project isn't to hurl more invective at the Fredocons, but rather to attempt a degree of understanding - yea, even empathy - with them.

One of the left's great weaknesses is their increasing inability to understand their opponents. We must not fall into the same trap, which is I think what the Never Trumpers have done.

If one takes a step back and merely looks at the big picture, the change in the political landscape is actually quite breathtaking. In the space of 18 months, a number of formerly pivotal figures on the Establishment Right (aka "Conservatism, Inc.") have not only broken with their party, but completely repudiated many of their long-term policy positions.

The increasingly punchable (oops, there I go again) Bill Kristol is another strange case. Not so long ago, he was one of the major voices in Official Conservatism and yet now he's a raving lunatic, howling away on Twitter without any sense of self-awareness.

Again, it's one thing to jump ship over a policy difference. A great many Republicans started out a old-line Democrats. Winston Churchill actually managed to jump ship twice - no mean feat.

I would argue that this is actually the right thing to do when a political party no longer represents your values or interests. Alternatively, you might have a change a of heart regarding the issues of the day (for example, moving to the pro-life side upon beholding the true horror of abortion), and that in turn might require a change of party.

But the Never Trumpers aren't doing that. They haven't come out and said: "You know, that whole Originalist Constitution is bunk. I'm all in on the Administrative State, and here's why."

It's true that they've effectively said this, but there's never any intellectual argument to back it up, just Trump hatred.

Is that really all that it took to break these people? Jonah Goldberg used to relish being the enfant terrible of the conservative movement, but now he's just a grouchy dude yelling at everyone to get off his lawn. His newest book is likely to impress no one and sell poorly since it appears to be nothing more than a long-winded recitation of his pet peeves.

Once upon a time, he could count conservatives running out and buying his book not just because they were interested in what he had to say, but because they wanted to support a fellow believer. After two years of pissing on the majority of his party, one wonders what market he has left.

That brings me to another strange aspect to this phenomenon. Political commentary is necessarily a narrow market, split pretty sharply down the middle. Liberals generally read liberal (or progressive) stuff, conservatives read conservatives stuff. There isn't a lot of overlap.

This means that the galaxy of one's audience is only about half of the body politic. What the Never Trumpers have done is narrow their market by about 80 percent, because at least that many Republicans support Trump in some aspect. It may be reluctant support or a tactical choice, but people who made the decision to support the president probably aren't interested in paying to have other people insult them.

Yet that's a big part of the Never Trump product. They don't just slag on The Donald himself, they slag on everyone else who might have decided that - on balance - he was a better choice than the Dowager Empress of Chappaqua, Felonia Milhous Pantsuit von Clinton.

Eric Erickson (whom I never read) is one of those evangelicals that apparently like to rip on other evangelicals over Trump. These people are particularly irritating. They basically embody every nasty stereotype regarding the religious right: holier-than-thou, intolerant, insufferably arrogant, tone-deaf.

These are the kind of people who embrace Rod Dreher's mindless (but super-sanctimonious) concept of running off into the hills and building monasteries until someone else fixes things. Or civilization collapses, whatever. At least they'll be pure when the End Times come.

(Again, these people consider themselves deep thinkers and this is what they came up with to solve the pressing issues of the day: hiding in a monastery.)

Not surprisingly, the market isn't there for what they're selling and - making matters worse - the progressives have decided that they're not interested in taking prisoners, only counting corpses. This is why Kevin Williamson's sacking has scared them so much. They've boxed themselves in.

There is of course an escape from this personal and professional prison they've created: defecting to the right and embracing Trump.

A lot of people have done it. It's actually pretty easy if one has an open mind and looks past the hype to see what The Donald is actually doing. It's been interesting to see a number of familiar faces over at American Greatness who used to be at Establishment Conservative publications. I don't think any were ever true Never Trumpers, though. When it came down to it, they gritted their teeth and punched the card for Trump. For them, it was the Flight 93 Election and they figured storming the cockpit was the only option left.

Indeed, their appearance isn't so much a capitulation to Trumpism as removing themselves from the lingering stink of Vichy Republicanism at their former publications.

And maybe that's the core issue after all. It's a hard thing to admit one's wrong, especially when one is badly wrong. For the better part of two decades, National Review and The Weekly Standard documented the high crimes and misdemeanors of the Clinton mafia. It was almost its own genre. Their prose was ruthless and hard-hitting as they accomplished one character assassination piece after another.

And yet not only was Her Hillaryness poised to take the crown, when push came to shove, these useless tools decided to shout "I'm With Her!"

(Actually, Goldberg didn't even have the guts to do that. He took the fake high ground of doing absolutely nothing. Talk about a profile in cowardice.)

2016 was a hinge-point election, and we're feeling its effects. Donald Trump isn't a blowhard lightweight with a five-second attention span. He is moving with deliberation and skill to transform the economic, strategic and political landscape, making it much friendlier to American interests and traditional conservatism in particular.

Having gotten the One Big Thing wrong, I guess its understandable that the Never Trumpers would retreat into snark and intellectual incoherence.

The other issue of course is not only were these folks morally wrong, they were also factually wrong. Hillary didn't win, Trump didn't cost the GOP control of Congress, and he hasn't unleashed an endless depression or started World War III. All of their predictions have proven false.

Even worse, many of their policy preferences have been exposed as false as well. The free trade lie has been exposed for all the world to see. We're also finally figuring out just how much Open Borders are costing us in terms of lower wages and higher crime - not to mention voting fraud.

We also have Europe to thank for exposing the fallacy of gun control. The UK in particular is doing bang-up job in demonstrating that it is people, not things that cause violent crime.

Oddly, some of the Never Trumpers picked this exact moment to jump aboard the Gun Control Express. I guess when you're wrong, you may as well go all in.

An alternative explanation for this erratic behavior is class envy. That is to say, Trump is viewed as vulgar, and his followers are distasteful, thus both must be cast out of the light.

This may well be true - peer groups can have a profound impact on people. In my own life I recognized that hanging out with a certain crowd was holding me back both professionally and in terms of personal growth.

I'd be more sympathetic to this argument if Never Trumpism was more uniform, but it isn't. You'd think that at the end of the day, even the hard-core members would have chosen stated principle (that is, the Clintons must be kept well away from power at all costs) over class, but I guess not.

The thing about class is that it's entirely a state of mind. I learned this from my grandparents, who were self-made. From modest beginnings they ascended into the ranks of the Country Club Republicans. They carried themselves like Old Money and had the easy arrogance of those who don't worry about status because they decide who has it.

Perhaps the Goldbergs of the world lack that kind self-confidence. Certainly the chinless wonders at National Review spend a lot of time trying to curry liberal approval. Even though the term "racist" is pretty much an empty insult, they sure do get worked up when progressives throw it at them.

Thus these folks find themselves seeking favor from people who hate them anyway and alienating the crowd that used to admire them. I know that we never really leave high school, but isn't this taking clique envy a little far?

April 29, 2018

One of our guilty pleasures on this blog has been watching the Quisling Never Trumpers twist in the wind.

I have personally known the pain and anguish of unemployment and my default position upon hearing of job loss is one of sympathy.

However it is hard for me to generate any sympathy in the case of the mass layoffs at Red State. This has less to do with their politics than their general nastiness towards everyone who disagrees with them.

Kevin Williamson showed zero humanity towards the working-class people who have borne the brunt of the elites' free trade policies. I suppose as a Christian I should be willing to forgive, but before I can do that, I need to see Williamson himself repent of his hate. This he has not yet done. He's simply added a layer of self-pity with delusions of martyrdom.

Forgiveness done wrong is simply enabling, which is something I refuse to do.

The Quisling Never Trumpers as a group are like Williamson. They love to drone on about principles and the free market, and now both have come back to haunt them. They chose to live by the sword, and now they're falling by it.

The Fredocons are selling a product few people want. I pointed this out when they first pulled off their human-skin masks and revealed their true reptilian faces. The market is saturated with Trump-bashing. Whole networks are dedicated to it. Who needs more of it?

And yet they persist. That's fine as far as it goes. I persist blogging even though the revenue stream here is meager at best.

That's because I have employment elsewhere. The market has said that my words aren't worth a comfy living in gentrified DC. The same is clearly true of the Red State crowd.

So while I may have to extend my annual reconciliation session, I will take a moment to enjoy the schadenfreude of people who declared me and mine their implacable enemies going down to bitter defeat - and tasting the same painful sensation of job loss they casually ignored in others.

April 19, 2018

Was it only yesterday that I was noting how the vise is tightening? Indeed it was, and today we learn that Andrew McCabe's false testimony has already been given a criminal referral to the DOJ prosecutor in Utah.

Is Trump lucky, or an insane strategic genius? Sanctimonious Jim Comey is hogging all the media attention at exactly the moment that his sins are at the forefront. As a rule, one always waits until one is out of legal jeopardy before writing the tell-all. Comey is about as stupid as they come.

The IG's reports are due soon and it's clear that the various conspirators still employed at FBI and DOJ are singing like a well-instructed choir.

I have to wonder if the reason Rod Rosenstein signed off on the raid on Trump's attorney is that similar strikes are in the works for the conspirators. After all, Cheryl Mills claimed to be Hillary's lawyer and therefore immune from questions. Sauce for the goose and all that.

Meanwhile, North Korea has signaled that it will not demand the removal of American troops from South Korea as a condition to peace talks. This is huge. North Korea is likely at the end of its tether and Little Rocket Man may well fear that Trump is just crazy enough to take him out. Certainly the Chinese think so.

Trump's tariffs may or may not boost American industry, but they have sent an unmistakable signal that the days of American passivity in the face of unequal trade agreements are over.

This brings us to the Middle East. The US embassy will shortly open in Jerusalem and * spoiler alert * the much-vaunted "Arab Street" will not explode.

The Dems have been planning on running on impeachment and (apparently) a total ban on large classes of firearms. The bizarre decision by Dick's Sporting Goods to destroy their unsold stocks of AR-15s shows just how deep-seated this progressive virtue-spiral is becoming.

I saw a media report that at the recent state Democrat convention in Michigan, the huge applause line was... gun control.

This in a state with 300,000 concealed pistol licensees and massive support for the private ownership of firearms. Does anyone seriously think that the reason Trump carried Michigan was because Hillary wasn't hostile enough to gun owners?

The polls right now are all over the place, but the prevailing trends are in Trump's favor. The Democrats had a historical advantage but seem determined to piss it away. I urge them to keep it up.

April 18, 2018

One of the ways in which the established media try to control the narrative is by treating each event as if it is some sort of surprise - and one that the principal actors were unaware of until it happened.

For example, the news that Hillary Clinton completely disregarded the law regarding classified materials was treated as some underhanded rumor, one that Her Hillaryness had hardly hear of.

Bill Clinton was a master of this, acting as if he'd just heard of it in the papers and Barack Obama tried to pull the same schtick, with varying results.

The problem is that the public has grown wise to the routine - partly because Donald Trump has been providing a master class in exposing it.

This is the essential background to today's congressional referral to the Justice Department for the numerous and well-documented illegal acts that the Dems have tried to cover up with the fake RUSSIA investigation.

The key element - which I cannot stress enough - is that everyone from Peter Strzok to James Comey to Andy McCabe and even Hillary Clinton - know what they did.

They know exactlywhat they did. They also know that othersknow.

One of the salient features of the current ruling class is its total lack of loyalty. These people have spent their life-energy in the relentless pursuit of power, status and comfort. The do this not for a higher cause, but to gratify their own lust and ambition.

The may claim to be operating for a cause, and use that cause to justify their illegal and immoral acts, but not a one of them is willing to die for that cause. In fact, they won't even suffer inconvenience for that cause. Consider Andy McCabe, who should be playing the role of the Loyal Soldier and silently accepting his firing for the Greater Good.

Instead he's trashing the sanctimonious James Comey, loudly denouncing him as a liar and claiming that Comey authorized his leaks - and lied to investigators about it.

Comey of course will hit right back, and both of them will see their credibility destroyed.

A similar dynamic is playing out involving all the conspirators.

On the face of it, the Congressional referral does nothing new. The charges presented have been public knowledge for a year.

What has changed over that year is public perception. Hillary has never been less popular. The Clintons gained loyalty by trading influence, and that it is a low ebb. With the Justice Dept. gearing up for major prosecutions, who is going to warm a prison cell on her behalf? It was one thing for Susan McDougal to take one for the team when Bill was in the White House, but they have nothing like that level of influence now.

The timing of the referral is interesting as well given that the Inspector General report is still at least two weeks away from release. What this does is not only raise the stakes, but also sends a clear signal that even the big fish - Hillary, Lynch and Comey - won't be able to provide protection. They will be out to save themselves.

A week or so ago my esteemed co-blogger remarked on a delusional piece claiming that Mueller would start lobbing bombshells right through the mid-terms. I would venture the prediction that the bombshells will be going the other way.

April 05, 2018

Back when I first entered adulthood, political debates were about persuasion. It was taken as a given that both sides wanted a positive outcome for the state or nation, the question was which policy would get us there.

In that bygone era, gun control was seriously debated as a way to combat crime rather than a moral good in and of itself. Similarly, abortion was portrayed as a lesser evil that was preferable to unwanted children being subject to abuse or death by neglect.

The goal wasn't just to win the debate on the merits, but actually convert people to your point of view.

The left no longer believes in this. The defenestration of Kevin Williamson is the clearest proof yet that they have moved into the "send them to the camps" stage of socialism.

I have few nice things to say about Williamson. I freely admit that I find the schadenfreude absolutely delectable. There is a certain amount of poetic justice to this self-absorbed gasbag who callously called on poor rural white communities to die to find himself facing the axe.

I've seen commenters on other sites quote Williamson's advice back at him, suggesting he learn to code or take a U-Haul to Texas where he can get a job as a greeter at Wal-Mart or Home Depot.

Such vindictive pleasures aside, Williamson's plight demonstrates that the old rules no longer apply. We have moved past debate as a clash of ideas. The left is out of ideas, it has only dogma and those who are not numbered among the Elect must be destroyed.

What is more, conversion is no longer a means of escaping the left's implacable wrath. This is a major departure from previous norms, and it does not bode well for our political system.

Let there be no doubt, Williamson had utterly abased himself before his new masters. Like the abject cuckold he was, he obediently deleted his Twitter feed to appease his liege-lord. He salted his inaugural article with plenty of cheap shots at both Donald Trump and those who supported him.

In short, he did all that turncoat could be asked to do and it availed him not at all.

This is the modern progressive movement. They do not want to persuade or convert, only destroy and rule.

The Quisling Never Trumpers would be wise to learn from this example. They all hoped Williamson would set a precedent, and that his amnesty would be followed by other opportunities for the rest of them to defect.

It should be clear that surrender is no longer an option. The left is playing for keeps, and in their mind the only good conservatives are silenced ones.

March 29, 2018

NowOver the last few years, I've noticed this strange trend of companies who sponsor obviously partisan shows suddenly dropping their sponsorship because of complaints on social media.

The latest example is Laura Ingram losing some sponsors for her Fox News show because she dared to clash with the Florida Gun Control Moppets.

I would think that whoever advertises on her show knows thta this isn't exactly a non-controversial thing to do. Presumably their marketing people determined that right-of-center viewers tend to buy the product they sell.

One would also think that they are aware that left-of-center people may not like this and because they routinely scream and show and throw tantrums, at some point they will threaten a boycott.

This has been going on basically since I've been alive. The left is always boycotting something because they are miserable people whose only source of happiness is making other people even more miserable.

This has happened to Rush Limbaugh a number of times, also Sean Hannity and so on.

Usually it doesn't work out for the company because the people demanding the end to the sponsorship had zero interest in buying stuff from them in the first place.

Social media is almost entirely bluster. If you wait ten minutes, the mob will find someone else to hate on and forget all about you.

But core customers have longer memories. Once you piss them off, you're going to have a hard time getting them back.

Consider the example of Delta Airlines, who stupidly decided to cancel the discount they offered to NRA members. Delta's proper course of action was to do nothing, perhaps making a statement that they offer deals to a variety of groups with a number of political viewpoints and they aren't going to take sides.

Instead, they jumped on board the Progressive Outrage Train and severed their ties.

That in turn caused the GOP-controlled Georgia Legislature to kill their tax break because Delta had obviously chosen sides. Delta lost tens of millions of dollars.

Making this even funnier is the news that apparently only 13 people bothered to use the NRA discount in the first place.

Now it's entirely possible that Delta figured that only those 13 people would care, but of course they were wrong. Lots of people cared and now Delta has picked a side in the culture wars.

Great job, doorknobs.

Speaking of corporate stupidity, it turns out that now-defunct Toys R Us was in fact a donor to Planned Parenthood. That's right - a business whose entire operation depends on a growing population of children was backing birth control.

That's almost as stupid as when Smith and Wesson tried to suck up to the gun control crowd back in the 1990s.

Complete and total idiocy.

The level of stupid here is legion. Twitter itself leans hard left, so only an idiot would think its ravings are a representative sample. Similarly, Facebook goes out of its way to drive conservatives off of its platform, so anything "trending" there likely has a high percentage of astroturf involved.

And yet, CEOs continue to take same awful advice and get the same awful results.

March 24, 2018

I offer a rare second post today because my response to my esteemed co-blogger is too long for a comment.

Like just about everyone else who follows politics, I regard the "Cromnibus" budget recently signed into law as a travesty, a bloated bag of giveaways and sellouts to the Washington Establishment.

Unlike everyone else, I know exactly where the blame lies, and it isn't with President Trump.

Many conservatives called for Trump to veto the bill. He clearly heard them and - as is his wont - toyed with the idea.

(One thing I like about him is that he thinks aloud. It throws other people for a loop, but I much prefer this method of policy generation to the usual secretive backroom deals conducted under a smokescreen of empty rote platitudes.)

Trump ultimately had to abandon the veto because (brace yourself) he didn't really have a lot of options. The man knows a weak hand when he sees it and the fact of the matter is that in budgetary concerns, Congress holds all the cards.

The Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan want you to believe otherwise. For years GOP leaders whined that they needed both chambers and the presidency to govern in a conservative manner. They are now revealed to be lying sacks of shit.

Here again we see how Donald Trump brings clarity where there once was illusion.

The awful truth of the matter is that the GOP has never wanted a balanced budget. Okay, maybe under Gingrich in the 1990s, but that was only because the GOP had been in the minority for so long, they forgot how nice it is to spend other peoples' money.

Now that they are in control, they rather enjoy the graft.

Of course, they can't come out and say this, so they shift the blame to arcane Congressional rules that they could change with a simple majority vote. The filibuster, for example, is a parliamentary procedure, not a Constitutional entity.

Originally it was there to prevent fast-track legislation from avoiding a public hearing.

In the 1970s it was changed so that senators didn't physically have to speak to stop a bill's progress. Instead it imposed a super-majority to stall controversial legislation, and it has done that job wonderfully ever since.

Everyone in Washington knows this. They also know that the GOP could simply send up individual departmental budgets one by one for approval. This is in fact how things operated for most of American history.

The problem was that this process didn't allow enough opportunities for graft. Thus the solution was an "omibus" bill that no one would actually bother to read in full.

To further limit scrutiny, the bills would be submitted after the start of the fiscal year, thus creating an artificial sense of urgency.

Trump was dead right when he said that the US military was being held hostage by congress. If you want to know why our ship crews are untrained and our aircraft are breaking, this is a big part of the reason for it.

Congress knows this as well, hence their constant can-kicking.

Had Trump issued a veto, the military would once more have been forced into starvation mode. There was also zero chance that his budget demands would have been met.

Long before that point, bond vigilantes will emerge and demand higher rates of return, which will in its own way provide a check on borrowing.

Back in the day, deficits were much more worrying because we could literally run out of money. When bills have to be paid in gold and silver, there is a very real chance of the treasury being empty.

Today, we just print more paper or add some ones and zeroes to the digital account. The Federal Reserve basically makes up whatever it wants and everyone pretends that it's solvent.

Finally, I must note that Candidate Trump never bothered to pay lip service about balancing the budget. If someone can find that, I'd be interested in seeing it because I remember the Quisling Never Trumpers hammering him on this quite a bit. So this isn't a broken promise at all.

Now Paul Ryan talked about budget discipline all the time. Mr. Fiscal Responsibility, that's him. Why he even drew up a Road Map!

And now look at him. Another lying swamp creature.

The president has now put down a marker, of course. If we know anything about him, it is that he takes such things quite seriously. I will be interested to see how he moves forward - and how the GOP Congress manages to contain the righteous fury of the yet-again-betrayed Right to Life movement.

Has the filing deadline passed? There could be some interesting primaries this year.

March 23, 2018

Today I went to pick up some of the full-strength decongestant. In Michigan, this can't be placed on the shelf. Instead, one must take a plastic card from the shelf, bring it to the pharmacy and then provide ID for the Pharmacist, who will sell you a box of cold meds.

The reason for all this annoyance was of course to combat the scourge of methamphetamine addiction. If even the slightest dent has been made in the use or availability of the drug, I am unaware of it.

I'm pretty sure the people who make the stuff are still able to do so. The only real effect has been making it a pain in the ass to buy effective cold meds.

Some folks may remember Eric Garner, who died because he was selling loose cigarettes in defiance of confiscatory excise taxes in New York City. It boggles the mind that there could be a black market in a legal substance sold in this country for more than a century, but progressives are masters of achieving economic disaster.

Earlier this week a bone-fide mad bomber was found in Texas. The fellow blew himself up rather than surrender to police, but not without creating considerable mayhem.

Presumably no one told him it was against the law to use explosives.

The new hotness is cracking down on opioid addiction, and once again the government's brilliant new, never-been-tried-before idea is to limit legal sales of a very effective pain medication.

I'm not a libertarian. I believe that certain items can and should be restricted from the general public.

I am also, however, a realist, and I know that things that are highly desired and easy to produce will be obtainable whether or not they are legal. Putting taxes or restrictions will only create a black market and fuel violent crime as gangs and cartels compete to corner the trade.

This is one of the reasons I find gun control stupid. Guns are more durable than any of these objects. It is possible to manufacture guns with 19th century technology. Maybe "gun crime" will fall, but violent crime as a whole will rise. There may be less school shootings, but more bombings or stabbings. In the UK, acid attacks are now a thing.

I don't think that's much of an improvement.

For decades the left has talked about "root causes" whenever the problem of crime comes up and I find it fascinating that the real issue in the country - it's abysmal mental health system - is suddenly a distraction from the urgent need to ban guns.

The strange thing in all of this is that school shootings are fairly recent. When gun laws were lax, such things were unheard of. Then we began to restrict them and - oddly - they became a thing.

This indicates that it's not the guns, but something else. If guns went away tomorrow, the murderous impulse would find other outlets, such as using trucks or explosives.

The issue - as I've said before - is that our system for checking up on each other is failing. Broward County failed on every level imaginable. The FBI has also covered itself in ignominy, fumbling one investigation after another.

It may be emotionally satisfying to shout "Ban all the things!!!" but in the end it accomplishes nothing. In fact, it arguably makes things worse.

But that's all progressives have to say. I guess we shouldn't be surprised. This is the same intellectual movement that came up with the idea of banning alcohol.